


Gavin's 'Cat'astrophe

by iamtheoneinthehole



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Minecraft!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-10
Updated: 2014-04-10
Packaged: 2018-01-18 20:21:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1441582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamtheoneinthehole/pseuds/iamtheoneinthehole
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompted anonymously; Minecraft AU: Ryan accidentally turns Gav into a ocelot and Gav goes around messing with everyone and snuggling until Ryan figures out how to fix him</p>
<p>In hindsight, Gavin probably shouldn’t have gotten that close to Ryan while he was practicing his sorcery...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gavin's 'Cat'astrophe

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this was definitely one of those fics that took on a life of its own (I definitely didn't anticipate this one ending up as a 10k fic when I first started writing it...). Hopefully you'll like it though anon, enjoy!

In hindsight, Gavin probably shouldn’t have gotten that close to Ryan while he was practicing his sorcery. In his defence though, he hadn’t actually realized that the man was wielding magic until he’d entered the room where he’d found the man weaving patterns of golden light together in the air around him… and once he’d seen that, he’d quickly found himself far too transfixed by how bloody top it all looked to even _think_ about backing back out of the room because it was a rare thing when he got to see the sorcerer at work and he’d always been in absolute bloody _awe_ of the power he wielded.

Ryan had always incredibly powerful after all, even by the standards usually set by other known mages or sorcerers who happened to possess his gifts. He was undeniably skilled and creative to the extent that he’d authored a good fifth of the known spells that were in common use today, as well as a good many more that had never actually been published. And the reason for that, as he’d once explained to Gavin when he’d asked, was just because he’d, initially, been experimenting with enchantments in the attempts of finding ways to make existing spells simpler to cast. It’d been a practise pretty much unheard of before him, to play around with the foundations of the practice that all magic wielders had, back then, believed was set in stone.

But Ryan had ended up proving it to be an entirely fluid component, capable of shift and change and growth. It could develop and evolve far beyond what anyone had dared to try within it before and, as time went on and the man had begun to hone his skills, he’d managed to full of feats that many had previously believed to be impossible... But then again _nothing_ was impossible with magic in Ryan’s eyes, because while the laws of sorcery and enchantment may not easily break, there was always a little room to _bend_ them. And naturally, in being the first one to realize this, his work with magic had become ground-breaking.

Of course this caused a lot of envy amongst those who also wielded magic as well as fears amidst those who didn’t and many of those who’d witnessed this new, freer magic of his were honestly terrified, or at the very least a little frightened by it. And so the rumors had begun to spread that the man must be planning something sinister, vindictive even. There’d even been a point where someone had tried to stir up a mob of villagers under the banner of defeating Ryan’s ‘madness’, a fabrication created purely out of their desperate desire to be rid of him…

Growing up in one of the smaller villages on the outskirts of Achievement City, Gavin had heard some of these tales that people would whisper in hushed voices around campfires or in dark rooms to scare each other. Of the mad sorcerer who many feared would one day aspire to be King… But the way those people told the stories made Gavin certain that there were pieces missing because Ryan had never sounded mad, he’d sounded impressive and powerful and, above all of that, brave… because he had to be to keep practising his magic despite the fact that so many people were determined to cast him in the role of the villain because he did.

In fact, only reason that the talk of taking out the sorcerer back then had remained as just talk was because of the fact that everyone knew to be against Ryan Haywood was to be against Geoff Ramsey too, he’d made that much pretty clear when he’d first heard the rumors. And being a young man already known for his prowess in battle, more so than most grown men, the prospect of fighting Geoff hadn’t been one that anyone had been particularly keen about… In the end, they’d all backed off pretty quickly once they’d know the man was backing this sorcerer.

And eventually the stories around the campfires had changed to stories of other terrible monsters and villains, the realm relaxing little by little as time passed without any kind of real threat or danger posed by the sorcerer. And after a few months of this, the world had mostly forgotten all about Ryan Haywood, save for the sorcerer’s who were becoming growingly more dependent upon his invaluable knowledge in the crafting of spell work. Gavin hadn’t forgotten though, utterly fascinated as he was by the idea of a man so powerful as that, though it’d been years later before he’d actually gotten a chance to meet Ryan face to face after joining Achievement City’s prestigious ‘hunter’ programme.

It was a programme that’d been designed by the first of the Ramsey to settle here many generations previous now where a group of talented and capable men and women, or ‘hunters’, would guard, watch and protect their borders from external threats (such as Creepers or Endermen). Geoff had begun leading the group shortly after his eighteenth birthday and his first two appointments to the force had been given to Ryan and a man named Jack Pattillo who’d actually originally caught Geoff’s eye off the battlefield through his expert mining and carpentry. The man had seen some sort of potential in the man’s swing and had trained him up to the point where he could admit Jack to the hunters alongside Ryan, whose new role as a defender of the people seemed to have helped the public opinion of him become at least a little less severe.

And a few years later they’d admitted three more members; a woman called Lindsay from the village next to Gavin’s who was apparently pretty capable with a scythe as well as her sword, a young fighting prodigy by the name of Ray who’d apparently been scouted out at a young age as a potential hunter, only being denied entry for as long as he had due to the morality issues involved with putting a kid his age out on the front lines against the threats their settlement faced, and another man called Michael from one of the towns on the west borders of the settlement, borders known by all to be the most dangerous since any mobs that reached the city usually rolled in from that direction. Apparently the man’s town had been under siege from one of them when he’d managed to get his hands on one of the swords in the blacksmiths, using it to keep the mob successfully at bay until the hunters had arrived. And once they realized that, until that day, the man had never held a sword before in his life, he’d been recruited on the spot.

And Gavin had idolized them all, had clung to every whisper of the stories the people in his village would tell about these mighty heroes… But he’d never actually gotten the chance to meet any of them in person. Not until a sorcerer named Edgar came to Achievement City.

He’d seemed friendly enough at first when he’d wandered his way into Gavin’s town, setting himself up in one of the rooms at the inn in their village, making a point of getting to know the locals and helping out with their duties where he could… And the villagers had been cruel initially, still not willing to trust magic all that readily, especially when wielded by a stranger, but something about the man had seemed to remind Gavin of the stories he’d heard about Ryan and he found himself developing a great sympathy for the man, to the point where he made an effort to include him where others would not and tried to encourage Dan to do the same… with limited success given the man’s seemingly inherent distrust of the sorcerer but at least he was trying.

As time had passed and Gavin had remained unharmed through his interaction with the sorcerer, the other villagers had seemed to ease up a little on their initial harsh judgement of the man, to the point where he could even be considered as a key pillar upon which their village’s entire community rested upon… They still didn’t fully trust him though, and Dan certainly hadn’t been swayed from his initial impression that something about this guy was… well _off_. He’d never been able to put his finger on why though when Gavin had asked him about it so he’d, mostly, just chosen to ignore his best friend’s instincts, instead spending more and more time with Edgar as the sorcerer showed him more and more of his magic.

And Gavin found himself utterly entranced by it. By its subtle glimmers as it travelled through the air, the air which almost seemed to tremble in the magic’s presence, by its showering cascades of light as the spell took effect, by the visible results of said spell like healing wounds or growing crops or bringing general prosperity to their community… And if Gavin occasionally happened to catch a glimpse of something darker snaking its way out from Edgar’s fingers as he murmured some incantation under his breath, well surely he was just seeing things right? Because there was no bloody way a sorcerer as friendly as Edgar could be a dark mage right?

He’d only realized, far too late as he’d watched his village and all those he’d known and cared for burning, how wrong he’d been to believe that.

Because not only was Edgar a dark mage, he was the high priest of the darker magic that conjured creatures such as Ender or Blazes to their lands, leaving nothing but devastation and destruction in their wake. And Gavin had told his family and Dan to _trust_ this man and they’d listened… and now they were nothing but ash on the wind and a heavy burden of guilt that weighed down on his chest to the point where some days he almost couldn’t bear it.

And after the village was nothing more than wreck of flaming cinders, Edgar had wandered over to him with a smirk curling his lips and had told Gavin that this was magic in its purest form, the magic that invaded and destroyed and honestly, had that been the last he’d heard of magic that day, he was pretty sure his passion and admiration of that art would’ve died that day, somewhere amidst the charred out rubble of the only home he’d ever known...

But then there’d been a group of figures gathering on the horizon and one of them in particular seemed to have Edgar tense a little as he turned his attention from the lone survivor of his destructive chaos to a man in the centre of the group who seemed to be wielding a staff of some kind… and Gavin knew, without even getting a closer look, that the man must be Ryan Haywood.

And it sparked something akin to hope in his chest, even as Edgar began to murmur a spell, a menacing black dart of destructive magic blazing through the air towards the other sorcerer moments later, because Ryan was known as the most powerful sorcerer within this realm for a reason and Edgar didn’t stand a bloody chance.

It’d still been a tense battle though as the two men fired spell after spell at each other and a distant part of Gavin’s mind told him he should be backing away from this, unless of course he wanted to get caught in the crossfire, but if there’d been a fascination in Edgar’s dark, warped sort of twisted magic, it was magnified tenfold by the glorious sort of magnificence that seemed to emanate from Ryan’s. And the sorcerer himself seemed to _glow_ with it as he met Edgar’s every attack with an assured sort of ease and a power that shook the ground beneath them with a low rumble, powerful enough that Gavin had to resort to using a nearby rock to prop him upright as he watched the sorcerer’s battle it out.

Eventually  Edgar’s resolve had seemed to weaken and with one last defiant spark escaping his fingertips he’d allowed Ryan to slap the magical constraints around his wrists… And Gavin had been far too busy feeling relieved that the man wouldn’t be hurting anyone else anytime soon to actually notice exactly where that last spell he’d cast was headed. Well, that was, until one of the redheads that’d been with the group was suddenly tackled him to the ground, the dark spell hitting the rock he’d been leant against moments later.

“What the fuck were you doing just standing around like that dumbass, you could’ve gotten yourself killed.” Those were the first words he’d ever heard fall from Michael Jones’ lips. And it hadn’t taken more than a few babbled apologies to the man afterwards for the others in the group to notice him, wandering over to ask him questions about what exactly had happened here.

He’d answered them readily enough at first, gradually beginning to stumble over a couple of his answers as the guilt over what’d happened here began to claw at his insides, and by the time they’d reached the questions about what had finally set Edgar off to burn the whole village down he’d fallen almost silent, Geoff actually having to patiently coax the answer out of him before he’d finally admitted, “He was trying to impress me. I… I used to watch him practise his sorcery a lot and sometimes he’d ask me what I wanted to see and… I asked him to show me the most impressive spell he knew… I didn’t realize he was a dark mage, I swear I-”

“I know and you don’t need to feel guilty about him taking you in. He’s taken in a lot of people more experienced with these things than you are… I was the one who trained him in his sorcery after all and even _I_ didn’t see this coming until it was too late.” There’d been a long beat of silence after that and Gavin had found himself grateful towards the man for attempting to console him, even as he felt the slightest flicker of irrational anger towards the man for not seeing in Edgar what Dan had been able to see from pretty much the moment the sorcerer had set foot in their village (because it was far easier to resent the man in front of him than to resent himself).

And after that moment, Ryan had offered to help Gavin bury his dead but he’d shaken him off because this had been a village that had despised magic, and seemingly with good reason. It’d be an insult to their memory if he’d allowed a sorcerer to bury them. And so he’d taken his time to dig out the graves himself, having to stop several times in the process, just to go quietly sit somewhere and take a moment to just let the survivor’s guilt crash over him. Eventually he’d finished and had moved to shifting the charred bodies into their resting places, almost breaking down twice as he’d shifted Dan’s before Geoff had offered to take over and… this time, Gavin hadn’t been able to refuse the offer of help.

And so the hunters had gotten to work, helping Gavin to finish off the job and burying them for him as Ryan respectfully kept his distance from the proceedings, seemingly understanding without Gavin saying exactly why he’d refused his help in the first place. And for that Gavin found himself immeasurably grateful. Eventually the dead had been buried and for a long moment a silence had fallen over the group as Gavin had knelt beside his parents graves, the hunters moving off a little to debate what to do about his since his village no longer existed and they couldn’t exactly leave him here to fend for himself, especially when he’d be plagued by an endless barrage of guilt and memories when he did.

In the end, they’d decided to take Gavin with them and, under any other circumstances, he was pretty sure he’d have been buzzing in excitement with the prospect of going to live in the capital of Achievement City with the warriors and protectors he idolized, some of them since he was only a kid, but as they’d left behind the village he’d grown up in, all he’d really been able to feel was numb. Numb as his hands had briefly rested over the mound of dirt that marked out his parents’ and Dan’s graves, numb as he’d murmured a soft goodbye to them before chasing after the group, numb even as the sun began to rise over the horizon and Edgar was shoved into a holding cell directly below Ryan’s quarters so that the sorcerer could keep an eye on him.

And Gavin had known it’d get easier with time to deal with this but, as he’d settled into his new home, he’d found all he could really feel right now was numb, empty…

But time had passed and things _had_ gotten easier, little by little. It’d started with Michael, Ray and Lindsay’s utter determination to teach Gavin how to defend himself against the threats their city faced, trying in vain to teach him how to wield a sword or even to operate the scythe Lindsay carried, before finally settling on a bow and arrows which Gavin actually seemed to take to easily enough, under Ray’s careful tutelage. And as he’d spent more time with them, he’d found the burden weighing down on his heart lifting a little because at least now he wasn’t alone anymore.

Then he’d started getting to know Geoff, the two of them hitting it off almost instantly and before Gavin had even realized it, the man had become one of his closest friends here in Achievement City. Not that Gavin had many these days but the rapidness which with their friendship had sprung to life was still something worth noting since the last time it’d happened that fast had been with D… point was, it didn’t exactly happen like that for the Brit that often and the bond that they’d begun to share as Geoff grew to trust him, so much that he’d even invited to join the hunters, was something that’d served to plug an aching wound within him, making Gavin feel just a little less broken as time had gone on.

After that, it’d been Jack that had extended the olive branch, taking the time to really get to know Gavin, to talk with him about the little things, things that wouldn’t matter to anyone else and yet always seemed to matter to him. The man just had this uncanny way of making Gavin feel valued, important. Plus he was willing to answer any question he could think of, no matter how dumb or bloody ridiculous they were sometimes, because really those questions would just end up amusing the man as he’d answer them with a chuckle or a grin or a fond eye roll. And when Gavin had, eventually, been ready to _really_ talk about what’d happened with Edgar, it’d been Jack that he’d gone to, allowing the man to hold him in his arms as he’d gripped him back just as tightly and tried to muffle the burning sort of agony in his chest with the man’s inherent sort of warmth… and honestly? It had helped a little.

It’d been Ryan who’d been the last to really bridge the gap between them, the other hunters all at the very least having helped out with showing him the ropes by now, but apparently the sorcerer had been keeping his distance because he wasn’t entirely sure how he’d be received by Gavin, especially after admitting that it was somewhat his own fault that Edgar had been able to wreak what destruction he had upon Gavin’s village. But eventually the sorcerer had knocked on the door to his home with an apology on his lips and something in his hands that’d made Gavin’s jaw drop into a wide gape.

Because the sorcerer had been holding the creeper pelt his parents had given him for his eighteenth birthday, carefully woven and welded together until it made the perfect armor (since they’d both known it’d always been Gavin’s dream to join the hunters). He’d assumed it’d been lost in the fire along with everything else but apparently it’d just been charred a little and Ryan had spent all this time carefully restoring it to its former glory and he hoped Gavin didn’t mind that he’d used a little of his magic to do that… And Gavin hadn’t minded at all and a few seconds later he’d been all but flinging himself at the sorcerer, murmuring a soft thank you into the man’s shoulder before pulling back and moving to trace his fingers over the armor almost reverently.

And as he’d noticed little details like the piece of stitching his father had messed up a little so that one side of the armor was a little uneven or the smooth finish of the creeper scales that’d come from his mother’s tireless polishing of the armor before they’d gifted it to him, he’d found himself suddenly capable of believing in the wonder and beauty of magic again.

After that, he’d found his bond with the hunters as well as his position amongst them only seemed to cement itself and grow to the point where he’d never been happier in his life, he only occasionally still got the pangs of guilt over what’d happened to get him to this point and life was pretty much bloody perfect…

Considering all that, it was hardly surprising that he found magic, and especially Ryan’s, so bloody incredible and years of knowing and eventually getting to court the man, along with Geoff, Michael, Jack and Ray, hadn’t change any of that. He was still just as awestruck as the little kid who’d clung to every fragment of the whispered stories about his powers and he was pretty sure, by this point, that he’d always be at least a little in awe of the man’s magic… and so really, he couldn’t have been expected to notice right away when one of the tendrils of light Ryan was weaving suddenly flared out in a rush of blazing light, spiralling towards him in a rush of pure energy that punched straight through his stomach and then…

\----

It was with a hazy sort of fuzziness that Gavin slowly regained awareness of his surroundings, blinking blearily a few times before the expression of a concerned looking Ryan finally swam into view. Though he couldn’t quite escape the feeling that he was seeing less of it than he usually would because... _was his vision narrower? And had Ryan always been that big and… why the bloody hell was everything in black and white?_

He’d tried to open his mouth to ask Ryan about it, actually jumping a good foot in the air when a low mew escaped his lips instead and… as he looked down he couldn’t help but notice paws in the place where his hands and feet should. Plus there was something he could feel wafting the cool air filling the room from side to side and… _no bloody way, was that a tail?_

And Ryan was now looking more sheepish than anything as he moved to scratch Gavin gently behind the ears, offering explanations and apologies that his barely registered after he’d caught ‘turned you into an Ocelot’ because… _what?_ He hadn’t even known sorcerers could do that and Gavin had been pretty sure that’d he known almost everything about what they were capable of (due to his almost obsessive perusal of Ryan’s spell books and his questioning of the man himself). He supposed then that some of his old village’s theories about magic users turning people into frogs hadn’t been quite so far off after all...

It was honestly hard to concentrate on that thought though, especially with Ryan continuing to scratch him behind the ears like that since it felt _so bloody nice_ and he found himself nuzzling the man’s hand, doing what was probably the cat equivalent of a smile in response to the soft, fond smile on the man’s lips that made something twist pleasantly within Gavin’s gut… he didn’t give the feeling too much thought though, assuming it was simply an Ocelot thing as he continued to nuzzle into the man’s hand...

And then his chest had started rumbling, causing him to let out an alarmed hiss as all of the hairs on his new, smaller, body began to puff out… and Ryan was obviously trying to hold in laughter at that and, when Gavin caught a look at himself in the mirror, he begun to understand why because all of his fur had puffed out to the point where he looked bloody _ridiculous_.

He caught a few more words from Ryan after that about staying out of trouble while he reversed this spell, his hands moving to give Gavin’s chin one last scratch before he took off to peruse his notes, eyes frantically skimming through the notes as Gavin watched him… and he quickly found himself growing bored as he watched, turning to eye himself in the mirror again and fighting off the instinct that tried to register the reflection as another creature, as he assessed his sandy brown fur, deciding that he actually made a pretty bloody top looking Ocelot so at least there was that.

And as time continued to pass and Ryan continued to flick through seemingly endless notes, Gavin found himself viewing his the man’s words to stay there as more of a challenge than anything. Because just how much trouble _could_ he get into in his ocelot form? Probably a decent amount if he really applied himself. Plus it’d give him something to occupy himself with as he waited for Ryan to find a cure to this spell so… really, it was a win-win wasn’t it?

\----

He’d started out by tracking down Ray’s room, hissing a little on some kind of inbuilt instinct when he came across Percival, the Ocelot that the man had been keeping as a pet ever since he’d somehow wandered into Ray’s quarters, set up residence and refused to leave. And usually Gavin got on great with him given that Percival was friendly enough and happened to like curling up beside him on the couch whenever his boyfriends were busy and he was trying to catch a little bit of relaxation between training and whatever mission they had lined up next to take care of.

But right now, all his instincts were saying was that Percy was another Ocelot, a threat even, and he had to assert his dominance over him within the hunter’s settlement before the other cat got any big ideas. And so he’d prowled around Percival, a low growl rumbling in his throat until the other cat backed down, bowing his head a little and closing his eyes as he accepted Gavin’s position as the cat of the house.

He then smugly set about rubbing his scent over different objects that Ray owned liked the chest at the end of his bed, or Pat the head, or a few of the many weapons the man owned. He was a little more careful with those though, still human enough in his mind to know how sharp and pointy Ray kept his daggers and how much they’d bloody hurt if he managed to catch himself on one of them. He’d managed to knock over a few smaller objects as he’d nuzzled them but… nothing important as far as he could tell. And he was sure Ray wouldn’t mind too much if he had…

Eventually the man in question wandered in, greeting both Ocelots are Percival for a moment as he moved to grab his daggers… and then the fact that there was an extra Ocelot in the room seemed to register in the man’s mind as he was turning back to face them, an obvious look of confusion crossing his features as he looked between them, as if trying to confirm that he was in fact seeing what he thought he was.

“So now there’s two of you huh? Must be some kind of Ocelot magnet… not quite the magnet I hoped on being growing up but hey, I’ll take it. I just really hope you’re not a female, or that if you are you’re not interested in Percy here, because otherwise we’ll end up with lots of Ocelot babies... and then Michael might kill me.” And Gavin knew what he meant by that. It’d been hard enough, after all, to convince the redhead to let Ray keep Percival and he’d only bowed to pressure then because Ray, Gavin and Jack had all ganged up on him, and then Lindsay had found out and joined in, and then Ryan and Geoff had admitted they wouldn’t mind if he stayed and Michael had jokingly called them all traitors before finally agreeing that the Ocelot could stay.

He couldn’t help but idly wonder how Michael would react when he saw him like this…

Before he’d had the chance to consider that thought any further though, his attention was quickly drawn back to the present as a gentle hand smoothed over his fur and… there was that weird rumble again that Gavin guessed must be purring. He’d nuzzled Ray’s hand, a strange sort of contentedness coursing through him at the light smile it’d brought to the man’s lips as he’d continued to stroke him. It hadn’t been until Ray had moved to offer Percival the same attention that Gavin had started growling, butting the other Ocelot’s head out of the way as he chased after Ray’s hand, to the point where the man had eventually sighed exasperatedly before moving to rub Gavin’s chin again.

“You’re not too good at sharing there are you? You know I guess I can get that I mean I get a little jealous too sometimes when it comes to some of the hunters I work with... There was this one time a few months ago when this guy from the outskirts of the Achievement City had his eyes on Gavin, he’s one of the hunters here; lanky, messy haired, happens to love Ocelots so I’m sure you guys will get on great.”

It was a good job really that Ocelots couldn’t laugh because, otherwise, Gavin was pretty sure he’d be blowing his cover right now just laughing at the irony of Ray’s words and he definitely didn’t want to do anything to clue the man in just yet, especially when what he was saying right now had Gavin so intrigued since he was pretty sure he could vaguely remember the guy, though he hadn’t realized the man had his sights set on anything other than trying to establish himself as a warrior by attempting to defeat Ray in a duel, an attempt that’d ended up failing miserably since there was no one in the entirety of Achievement City, other than Michael or Lindsay, who could really match the man in hand to hand combat. Though perhaps he’d been wrong before when he’d assumed that was the whole story here.

“Anyway, that guy was trying to pull the moves on Gavin and he had literally no idea about it. The guy can be pretty naive when it comes to stuff like that… it’s actually usually kind of cute but, in this case, it was just pissing me off since it meant that the guy just wouldn’t fucking back off… So I may or may not have challenged him to a duel over it, just so that I could get the guy to fuck off… Gav doesn’t know about that though as I said, he’s kinda naive about this stuff and honestly I’m not really sure how he’d react if he _did_ know so… maybe it’s better that way. But yeah, I guess what I’m saying is I get why you might be a little hostile around Percy. But he’s not like that jackass like that guy in the story was so maybe you should try to give him a chance. Who knows? Maybe you two will end up being friends once you get to know each other.” As if on cue, Percival growled at him, receiving a sharp hiss from Gavin in response and drawing another sigh from Ray’s lips in the process as he amended, “Or maybe not.”

They’d sat there a little while longer as Ray walked Gavin through the basics of the hunter’s lives, the man’s voice barely registering beyond the gentle lilt of his tone since Gavin was currently having a mini-meltdown over Ray’s words because he’d called him bloody _cute_ and he’d gotten that other guy to back off and he’d admitted he was jealous and… had he mentioned that Ray had called him bloody _cute_?

Which meant that there was a probable chance that Ray liked him the way the man who’d been pursuing him had… then again, maybe he was just reading too much into this and the guy had just been jealous of the time Gavin had been spending with the guy, maybe the cute was totally platonic and Gavin was wrong to get his hopes up about this being anything more than that…

Because, as he realized with a jolt, he was getting his hopes up. He wanted Ray to like him that way and… honestly? That revelation was a little too much for Gavin to deal with right now while he was stuck in Ocelot form. So instead he’d made sure to distract himself with listening to Ray talk about the city, the hunters and the work they did, honestly hanging off the man’s every word.

Because Ray had always claimed that a person was at their most vulnerable while speaking to those you believed didn’t understand you, namely animals since you could tell them anything and they wouldn’t judge, offer them any secret and they wouldn’t tell. And it wasn’t that they didn’t sometimes talk about stuff like this to each other sometimes, on the longer missions when they ended up having their weirdly profound heart to hearts under the stars but… there was a different kind of honesty in the way Ray talked to Gavin the Ocelot than the way he did to Gavin the person. Because there was no real forethought required in how the man shaped his words, no fear, however small,  of how they would be received. Speaking to a listener that wouldn’t judge allowed Ray to speak with a freedom that no one ever really had in life when speaking to other people.

And it was nice to get to see the man like that, even nicer to be able to continue nuzzling his hand at the same time and it’d only been after what’d felt like an hour of the man lavishing him with attention before Ray had finally stood up, moving to grab his remaining daggers from a nearby chair before gradually coaxing Gavin out of his room and along the hallway to Jack’s.

“I have to go train for a bit but Jack’s got some free time this afternoon so he’ll be able to look after you while I go train with Michael and Lindsay. They’re both kind of badasses on the battlefield so it’s pretty useful to train with them when I want to keep my skills sharp. Linds will be thrilled to hear about you by the way, she loves Ocelots. Michael on the other hand? ...Maybe not so much, but he’ll come around.” And with that, he ran a hand over Gavin’s soft fur once more before offering a quick goodbye and leaving him in Jack’s capable hands.

\----

Since Jack’s room didn’t smell like Percival and there weren’t any other creatures in sight to encroach upon his territory, Gavin found it a lot easier to relax in Jack’s presence, but then again he’d always found the man to have a relaxing presence anyway.

It was what’d made him trust Jack with everything first, what still made him turn to the man as a source of comfort before any of the other hunters whenever the anniversary of what Edgar had done to his village, or his parents or Dan’s birthdays, happened to draw near, because Jack’s presence had always had this soothing quality to it. He didn’t judge, he didn’t try to make you talk about things you didn’t want to, he’d just sit there with you, a reassuring presence at your side whenever you needed that comfort and being an Ocelot hadn’t really changed that all that much.

Because here he was, curling into Jack’s side so that his chin rested on one of the man’s legs, Jack’s hand idly stroking through his fur and he found himself practically melting into the man’s touch, purring loudly in a way that _had_ to be getting on the man’s nerves, though he never complained nor stopped lightly fussing his head and Gavin found himself drifting off a little on the man’s leg.

Turning into an Ocelot was kind of a tiring process after all. It hadn’t been easy at first figuring out how to operate four legs instead of two and the how the tail he had worked was still kind of beyond him. Not to mention these Ocelot instincts of his were driving him half insane with his sudden need to leave his scent on everything, especially his boys because they were _his_ boys and Percival best be aware of that.

But with Jack, all of that seemed to clear from his head and before he knew it he was fast asleep, only stirring what was probably an hour or so later when the man began to snore and he’d woken up to the noise, slipping off the man’s lap with an alarmed yelp that, thankfully, didn’t wake him. It wasn’t as if Jack was usually a loud snorer but Gavin got the sense he was hearing it that way due to some sort of enhanced hearing (not that he knew whether Ocelots actually had enhanced hearing or not but it definitely seemed like it from where Gavin was standing right now) and honestly the sound was kind of unnerving when it was this loud.

So he’d ended up slipping out of the man’s room, after one last gentle nuzzle to the man’s hand and trying not to analyse too much the sudden rush of fondness that he’d felt as he’d taken in the man’s relaxed, almost blissful, expression as he slept... Oh there’d also been that good few minutes he’d spent trying to bat Jack’s door open with his oversized paws before he’d finally managed to slip through it but no one had been around to witness that part so at least he didn’t have to admit to that part when he’d inevitably tell this story to the others later when he’d been switched back.

\----

After he’d snuck out of Jack’s quarters, he’d headed straight over to the courtyard where he knew Michael would be practising, not quite able to resist the urge to mess with the redhead a little as he’d padded his way across the training grounds, deliberately weaving himself between the man’s legs just as he aimed a blow at Lindsay and causing him to stumble a little.

He’d let out a few choice words, trying to shoo Gavin away and, for a moment, he’d pretended to comply, waiting until Michael’s back was turned before burrowing his way through the man’s legs again to the point where he actually almost toppled over, Ray catching the man’s arm at the last minute and suddenly Gavin actually felt kind of bad about what he’d been doing.

And so he’d moved to rest by Michael’s feet, wide eyes staring up at the man as he tried to make his new furrier face as apologetic as he could… and it seemed to work, at least a little, based on the way the man’s expression had soften a fraction and he’d moved to briefly scratch a patch of fur behind one of Gavin’s ears that had him purring and nuzzling into the man’s hand for more affection as Ray explained that this must be the second Ocelot he’d found in his quarters earlier.

Michael had grinned a little at that, teasing Ray that he must have some sort of latent powers since he seemed to be drawing animals to him almost as much as Ryan did. Apparently a side effect of the man’s, and all, magic was the pull it held over certain species. It was why there was a near constant mass of animals gathered below the sorcerer’s window and while it’d been initially a little weird to get used to, it was nothing in comparison to the blaze or Ender that Edgar’s magic had drawn to him so Gavin found himself adapting to it pretty easily… Well, to some of the animals more than others since it’d taken him a while to figure out exactly how to deal with the wolves that flocked to the man. His arms still bore the scars, after all, from where he’d messed up with the first few he’d encountered.

And suddenly he found himself idly wondering whether or not the scars would’ve transferred to his Ocelot form, shifting away from Michael a little as he tried to get a better look at his legs, and almost toppling over in the process. At least it’d managed to draw an amused chuckle from Michael who’d apparently been watching, the sound of the man’s laughter sending a rush of warmth through him that he’d again forced himself not to analyse as he’d moved back to nuzzle the man’s hand a little more.

“You know… with that color fur and the clumsiness he kinda reminds me a little bit of Gavin… did you or Jack name this guy yet?”

“Nah, we were gonna wait and see what Lindsay thought since I got to name the last one.”

Lindsay had let out something bordering on an excited squeal at that, shooting Ray a grateful smile before moving to carefully study Gavin, clearly trying to assess which of her go to names for this situation would end up fitting the Ocelot best, before she’d offered, “How about Vav?”

If Gavin had been human at that moment, he’d have laughed a little at that. Because the name ‘Vav’ had become a nickname of his after he and Ray had saved a kid’s baby Ocelot from a tree and, in that sense, he guessed it was weirdly fitting to name one after that. The kid it’d belonged to had insisted at the time that they were heroes but that their names didn’t sound cool enough to be _real_ heroes and the only way to fix that was to make them sound cooler. And so, Ray and Gavin had become X-Ray and Vav because apparently Vav sounded cool because it had two Vs and everything sounded cooler if you added an X to it.

And to be fair, they had sounded pretty bloody top for hero names so they’d agreed to the names and, amidst the younger generations that lived throughout Achievement City, they’d stuck to the point where even their parents would refer to him and Ray by the names sometimes. And Gavin had always liked that, liked the feeling it gave him since it reminded him of the way he was helping people now, protecting them and sometimes when he was having one of the days where the guilt of his past weighed more heavily upon his shoulders, it was a child’s cry of ‘Vav’ that ended up putting him in a better mood. Because even if he didn’t feel like a hero sometimes, at least there were people now who saw him as one.

In short, he loved the name Lindsay had picked and he’d made sure to make his approval known, nuzzling a little against Lindsay’s hand and purring as the woman let out a noise close to a squeak and the other two hunters chuckled a little at her reactions. “Looks like he likes Vav.”

“Vav it is then.”

\----

It’d been a good few hours after that before he’d managed to slip away from the three hunters, especially Lindsay who seemed to be determined to shower him with love and attention and he’d actually wound up making a note to self about somehow getting hold of an Ocelot to replace ‘Vav’ once he changed back because the woman clearly wanted one of her own and honestly he couldn’t imagine a better owner for one than her.

Eventually though, he’d managed to creep his way back inside the hunters quarters, wandering the halls for a little bit until he’d finally stumbled upon Geoff’s… the only problem was, when he’d found him, the man had looked undeniably shaken and any sort of thoughts of messing with the man quickly flew from his mind as he quickly moved over to the man, nuzzling against his arm insistently until Geoff paid him some notice.

“So you’re the new Ocelot Jack mentioned huh? Hey there buddy, I’m Geoff.” Gavin mewed in response to that, drawing a little chuckle from the man in response as he’d moved to lightly brush his fingers through Gavin’s fur, waiting until the Ocelot had settled at his side before he continued, “You know you’ve got pretty great timing there because honestly I could use someone to talk to right now… One of my boys went missing earlier. None of the locals seem to have seen him and he definitely hasn’t been hanging around any of the other hunters… not that I’ve told them he’s missing yet, wouldn’t want to worry them you know?” And Gavin did know exactly how that was and was immensely grateful that he hadn’t shared his concerns with the others, especially while Ryan was still busy trying to find a spell to reverse the one he’d cast and Gavin certainly wasn’t able to reassure his boys that he was okay while he was like… well, this.

“Because he’ll probably be fine but… I can’t help but worry about the dumbass anyway you know?” Another mew followed by a half smile that didn’t reach Geoff’s eyes, “Maybe you do, you seem pretty smart for an Ocelot given how you’ve managed to navigate our quarters all day. Jack’s still amazed you managed to slip out of his rooms and… looking at you now, it’s almost as if you understand every word I’m saying… to be fair, far fucking weirder things have happened in Achievement City before now so what’s a cognizant Ocelot to add to the list… How about this. Mew once if you understand me, mew twice if you don’t.” _Mew_. “Then again maybe you’d have done that anyway even if I hadn’t said anything since you seem to like to talk, don’t you little guy.” _Mew_. Geoff half smiled at that before letting out a gentle sigh and patting his lap for the Ocelot to curl up across.

“Well at least you seem as friendly as Percival was, maybe even friendlier… I’m guessing you’ve been a pet at some point given how relaxed you were around Jack earlier, maybe you escaped from one of the nearby villages that border the city, maybe you were drawn here by Ryan’s magic. Seriously, the guy’s like a creepy animal version of the pied piper sometimes… he’s a good man though, pretty sure you’ll like him if you decide to stick around. Gav will like you too, he’s always had a soft spot for Ocelots, though not as big of a one as Lindsay’s. Maybe you’ll even end up living in his rooms since its already a mess so there’s not really too much damage you could do in there.” An indignant mew and suddenly the smile was falling from his lips a little as something more pensive colored Geoff’s expression, “You know? I can’t quite shake the feeling that you’re familiar somehow… you actually remind me of him a little bit. I mean, you’ve got the same colored hair,” He teased, running his hand through Gavin’s fur once more.

“I just hope he shows up soon so you can meet the idiot. You know, with all this grief he’s giving me? The fucker’s lucky I love him… not that he knows about that. But I suppose that’s the advantage of talking to an Ocelot about this stuff, even the ones that do seem to understand you. Because you can share your secrets with them and they’ll listen but they won’t tell...”

And that was roughly the moment that Gavin stopped registering the man’s words entirely because _love_? Geoff _loved_ him… and he hadn’t meant platonic love either, otherwise he’d have told _Gavin_ that instead of the Ocelot he believed _wasn’t_ him… so it was romantic love then. Geoff Ramsey bloody _loved_ him… And maybe Ray did too, given the jealous he’d talked about having earlier. And Jack had spent all that time putting Gavin back together after everything that’d happened with Edgar and… surely that had to mean something, didn’t it? And sometimes Michael would shoot him these soft, almost fond looks when he still occasionally, stubbornly, tried to teach Gavin how to actually successfully wield a sword, still with no real progress, though at the very least he’d managed to get his stance right so the redhead didn’t immediately knock him on his ass whenever they trained together… and maybe he’d been reading those looks wrong all this time because looking back, it was a different kind of fondness to the one that’d used to reside in his parent’s eyes, or Dan’s, or even Lindsay’s here and now. And Ryan… he’d spent all that time salvaging his armor, had kept his distance from Gavin when he knew he’d needed it and had done his utmost to make Gavin see the beauty in magic again and why would he even bother if he didn’t care about him that way?

Of course he couldn’t be certain with anyone except Geoff and _maybe_ Ray but, the moment Ryan found the counter spell to his situation, he was determined to give this thing that seemed to be burning between the six of them, perhaps had been all along, a try. And consequences be damned because he knew he’d always wonder about the what ifs and could have beens if he didn’t.

\----

It was only when dusk had started to fall upon the hunter’s settlement that Ryan had finally found him, curled up beside an empty plate of chicken that Lindsay had set out for him, a triumphant look on his face as he brandished a sheet with the spell that _should_ reverse the enchantment Gavin was under… should, of course, being the operative word here since this was new, experimental magic that Ryan was working with.

But Gavin had never known the man to fail in any of the spells or enchantments he’d attempted yet and he had every faith that this would be no exception. And so with one last lick of the plate, and a light nuzzle to Ryan’s hand, he’d moved into position, watching in unabashed fascination as the man begun to weave patterns of gold light through the air, the room around them practically thrumming with energy as it’d surged out before spiralling its way forcefully towards the Ocelot, hitting Gavin right in the chest and then…

\----

He’d woken up slowly, limbs feeling suddenly heavy in comparison to the Ocelot’s lighter, more nimble form. It’d taken a long moment, longer than Gavin would’ve liked to admit, to remember how to stand on two legs and an even longer one than that for him to suddenly register his nakedness, accepting the boxers offered by the sorcerer moments later as the man pointedly averted his gaze and… was he _blushing_.

The more he studied the man, the more he realized that he appeared almost uncharacteristically flustered. And so Gavin made sure to take his time sliding on his boxers, biting his lip in faux concentration, he was pretty sure he heard the man choke a little when he looked around a little too soon.

And suddenly Gavin felt a lot more confident about what he planned to do next.

He’d wandered over to Ryan, hands moving to tangle in the man’s shirt as he pulled him in closer. And there’d been a brief moment of hesitation as he’d met the sorcerer’s gaze, making damn sure he was reading the situation right before he went any further… And when all he’d found there was a shocked sort of hope, as well as something warm that made something in Gavin’s stomach flutter pleasantly, he knew he had.

And so, with the slightest curl of his lips, he’d leant in to close the distance between them, lips gliding together as if they’d been doing this for years… and maybe they could’ve been for all Gavin knew but he wasn’t about to linger over that, choosing to simply be grateful for the fact that Ryan was in his arms now with his surprisingly soft lips and his strong, firm hands on Gavin’s back and his warm, wet and claiming tongue as it licked its way into Gavin’s mouth. And suddenly he was convinced that this moment was a kind of magic in itself because never had he felt more bloody enchanted by the man than he did right now…

It’d only been the sound of the door to the room they were in opening and Ray’s surprised yelp that’d caused them to pull apart, the man immediately babbling his way through apologies for disturbing them as he’d begun to walk back out of the room… but then Gavin had caught onto his wrist, taking a moment to pray to whichever of the various deities the villagers were actually right about that Ryan was on the same page he was with this, before pulling Ray into a kiss of his own.

Eventually the pair of them had pulled back, both of them a little flushed and when he’d turned to face Ryan, he didn’t seem to be faring much better… though the approval on his face was obvious and seconds later, when the man had claimed Ray’s lips for his own, he’d suddenly gotten the feeling that this actually, despite the odds, might just all work out as planned.

\----

After a quick talk with Ryan and Ray (after they’d finally managed to stop making out with each other, which to be fair on them was still kind of a novelty so they couldn’t exactly be blamed for that), they’d come to the conclusion that they all wanted the same things; namely each other, Michael, Jack and Geoff. So naturally the next step was to tell them, or show them as the case may be, putting it all out on the line and hoping for the best…

They’d started by tracking down Michael, finding the redhead in the training ground where he was clearing up the discarded weapons and targets with Lindsay. And, after a quick squeeze of his hand from Ray for ‘moral support’, he’d moved down to join them, gently nudging the sword the man was holding from his hands and pointedly ignoring the man’s frustrated expression that bordered on annoyance as he’d leant in to catch the man’s lips in a kiss…

What he hadn’t expected was the slight whimper the redhead had let out when he had, nor the way he’d tugged him in closer moments later, tongue ravishing his mouth as he’d all but clung to the redhead’s shoulders. And when Michael had pulled back, it’d been with a light smirk on his lips and a ‘what took you so long dumbass’ since apparently the redhead had realized the tension between all of them a while back, he’d just been waiting for one of them to _finally_ realize it and ‘make a fucking move already’.

And apparently he’d not been the only one who’d realized this before them, judging by the smug looking smirk that Lindsay wore that only grew wider as Michael had then moved to kiss Ray then Ryan and she’d pulled Gavin into a hug, congratulating him for ‘finally getting a clue’ with an amused grin before she’d moved to gather Michael’s discarded sword, shooing the boys away from the grounds to tell Jack and Geoff, making a point to add that the former now owed her money and to remind him of that when they told him before she’d gotten back to work, leaving them to go and track down the other two men.

\----

Find Jack hadn’t been too difficult. He’d been in the canteen area of their settlement, cooking up a meal for them since apparently Geoff wasn’t up to it right now and though even Jack didn’t seem to know why that was… based on the conversation he’d had with the man earlier, he was convinced he could make a pretty good guess.

So he’d deliberately kept telling Jack as to the point as possible, pulling the man into a sudden kiss that’d almost made him drop the pot he’d been holding, the nature of it soft, sweet and lingering, before he’d taken off to find Geoff, leaving the others to explain the situation to him as he’d rushed off to track down Geoff, not wanting the man to worry about him for any longer than he had to.

He’d eventually stumbled upon him holed up in Gavin’s room, clearly waiting for him to return there, and the moment he’d entered it, a mixture of relief and just the slightest hint of nervousness crossed the man’s features as he’d stood up to walk over to Gavin. And suddenly it’d been _him_ that’d been surprised by a kiss as Geoff pulled him in close, lips moving to meet his in a kiss that was long, deep and just a little desperate, the two of them only pulling apart when air became a necessity as they’d caught their breath against each other’s lips for a few moments.

Then Geoff’s expression had clouded a little as he’d made Gavin promise to never disappear on him like that again, his eyes now obviously assessing the Brit’s skin for any signs of damage, relieved when he found none and really, Gavin could understand the man’s concern given the ridiculous amount of enemies they made doing what they did… plus, it was nice to know that the man already cared about him this much, before they’d even begun to try pursuing a relationship. It gave him hope for the kind of future they’d have together.

And so he hadn’t hesitated, even for a moment, before making that promise to the man, pulling him into another kiss moments later that was softer, more languid, and in that moment he realized he’d just found a new definition for _bloody perfect_ because how he’d felt before this revelation hadn’t even come close.

\----

After that everything had just sort of… fallen into place.

Perhaps it was because it’d always been meant to happen this way… the relationship he meant, not the whole Ocelot thing (because even if there was such a thing as fate, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t have thought to plan things out in _that_ much detail) and it’d just been their collective obliviousness, excluding Michael of course, that’d held them back until now. Because courting his boys really wasn’t all that different from how it’d been before, only with the added bonuses of make out sessions, flirting that actually went somewhere, blow jobs and the knowledge that at the end of the day that there were five men in this world that loved him and each other more than anything.

And honestly, he’d been right before when he’d thought of this as a different kind of enchantment because he loved his boys and they loved him and, honestly, there was _nothing_ that felt more magic to him than that.


End file.
